"And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." Matthew 24:14
The next few months of this blog will look at the lives of missionaries through the ages. It is my hope that you will be encouraged and strengthened in your faith as you see God's hand working through the lives of ordinary people as they followed the will of an extraordinary God.
We will next look at Christian missions from 1000 to 1499 AD. Christianity continued to spread throughout Europe, in Asia and into Africa where it already had historical roots. This time also saw the Bible translated into more languages, including English, and the printing of the Gutenberg Bible.
1000 - Christianity accepted by common consent in Iceland. Leif Eriksson introduces the Gospel to Greenland and possibly Vinland (Newfoundland)
1008 - Sigfrid (or Sigurd), English missionary, baptizes King Olof of Sweden
1015 - Russia is said to have been "comprehensively" converted to the Orthodox faith
Olaf II Haroldsson, first king of the whole of Norway, sees Norway convert to Christianity
1200 - The Bible is now available in 22 different languages
1219 - Francis of Assisi presents the Gospel to the Sultan of Egypt
1266 - Mongol leader Kublai Khan sends Marco Polo's father and uncle, Niccolo and Matteo Polo, back to Europe with a request to the Pope to send 100 Christian missionaries (only two responded and one died before reaching Mongol territory) to China
1321 - Jordanus, a Dominican monk, arrives in India as the first resident Roman Catholic missionary
1323 - Franciscans make contacts on Sumatra, Java, and Borneo
1368 - Collapse of the Franciscan mission in China as Ming Dynasty abolishes Christianity
1382 - Bible translated into English from Latin by John Wycliffe
1389 - Large numbers of Christians march through the streets of Cairo, denouncing Islam and lamenting that they had abandoned the religion of their fathers from fear of pesecution. They were beheaded, both men and women, and a fresh persecution of Christians followed
1408 - Spanish Dominican Vincent Ferrer begins a ministry in Italy in which it is said that thousands of Jews and Muslims were won to faith in Christ
1410 - Bible is translated into Hungarian
1450 - Franscian missionaries accompany Portuguese expedition to the Cape Verde Islands
1462 - Johannes Gutenberg begins printing the Bible with his movable-type printing process
1486 - Dominicans become active in West Africa, notably among the Wolof people in Senegambia.
1491 - The Congo sees its first group of missionaries arrive. Under the ministry of these Franciscan and Dominican priests, the king would soon be baptized and a church built at the royal capital.
1493 - Pope Alexander VI commands Spain to colonize the New World with Catholic missions; Christopher Columbus takes Christian priests with him on his second journey to the New World
1496 - First Christian baptisms in the New World take place when Guaticaba along with other members of his household are baptized on the island of Hispaniola
1498 - First Christians are reported in Kenya
The missionaries/missions that will be highlighted during this era are:
John Wycliffe
John Wycliffe
1320 - 1384
As Marco Polo began his famous journey to the far east in 1324, John Wycliffe turned four years old. The radical Franciscans were denouncing the riches of the Papacy, and Pope John XXII was mid way through his reign The world was at peace; and Rome held ultimate authority in the lives of the people of the continent and the British Isles. From Augustine and Constantine till the birth of Wycliffe, the Church was the center of every person's life.
Wycliffe was born in 1320 and studied Theology in Oxford. His training and disposition led him to oppose the ownership of English land by the Papacy, on religious and theological grounds rather than merely economic. From 1376 onward Wycliffe published tracts which decried the secularization of the Church. This secularization, he maintained, was beneficial neither to the Church or the State. In 1377 the Pope issued a Bull condemning in 18 theses the writings of Wycliffe. Wycliffe's reaction was violent. He began to denounce the Pope in vehement writings.
From 1378 to 1379 Wycliffe published his theological system in a series of tracts. The main thesis of these works was that the Scriptures are the foundation of all doctrine. This was the turning point of doctrinal history. To this point Tradition was placed, by Rome, alongside Scripture as a source of doctrine; but Wycliffe disputed this notion and John Hus of Prague and Martin Luther as well as Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin would adopt the view of Wycliffe. Thus, Wycliffe is often called the "Morning Star of the Reformation."
Wycliffe's doctrine of the Church was likewise revolutionary. He saw the Church as a spiritual institution and not a political one. Thus the pre-reformation work of Wycliffe lay in his doctrines of Scripture and the Church. Without Wycliffe, there could not have been a Reformation. Or, for that matter, an English translation of the Bible.
Wycliffe's translation is well known. He did his work from the Latin Vulgate; thus giving the English people the first translation of the Scriptures in their own language. His translation was consulted by Tyndale, Coverdale, the Bishops, and of course the Authorized Version translators. He was a translator before Luther; a theologian before Calvin; and a reformer before the Reformation. He died in 1384. The floodgates opened by Wycliffe would reach fruition in Zwingli and Luther.
The beginning of the Great Schism in 1378 gave Wycliffe fresh opportunities to attack the papacy, and in a treatise of 1379 on the Eucharist he openly denied the doctrine of transubstantiation (the belief that the bread and wine in communion become the actual body and blood of Christ). He denounced the Church hierarchy and maintained that the church should give up its worldly possessions.
Included here a few verses of his translation of Genesis 1 -- in the old English which he used.
"In the firste made God of nougt heuene and erthe. The erthe forsothe was veyn with ynee and void, and derknessis weren vpon the face of the see; and the Spiryt of God was born vpon the watrys. And God seide, Be maad ligt; and maad is ligt. And God sawg ligt, that it was good, and deuydid [divided] ligt fro derknessis; an clepide [called] ligt day and derknessis, nygt. And maad is euen and moru [morn], o day. Seide forsothe God, Be maad a firmament in the myddel of watres, and dyuyde it watres from watrys".
It is difficult for us to imagine how these simple and familiar words must have thrilled the hearts of thousands when they heard them for the first time. The translating of the Scriptures was also extremely dangerous, because the church had forbidden that the Scriptures be put into the language of the common people. Nevertheless, even though printing had not been invented, many copies must have been made laboriously by hand, for there are still nearly 170 hand-copied Wycliffe Bibles extant.
One of the greatest Bible translation organizations in the world today takes its name from John Wycliffe Wycliffe Bible Translators
(Information taken from Higher Praise)
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